This isn’t a new aircraft type. It’s an aircraft that Qantas has a decade of experience operating and that all the trainers have a fair bit of experience on. A proper sim currency program (both ongoing as well as slightly more ramped up/ directed as return to service approaches) should get the trainers up to speed again.
Then, when (if?) it comes time to re-activate the A380s they will likely I fly them across the hill from MHV to LAX first- not sure if they can do gear swings in MHV or whether the jet will need some hangar time to do that. That gives you anywhere between 6 or 9 sectors (depending on how many aircraft you’re getting out of storage at any one time) to get some trainers current in the jet. Then you have a similar number of sectors getting the jet(s) back to SYD (with or without pax) which takes care of more trainers. Perhaps some SYD-MEL-SYD stuff to get some more sectors into line crew and then we’ve got enough critical mass to get up and going.
Yes, an order for A350s in the interim certainly muddies the waters regarding the A380 return. I guess we’ll wait and see on that one.
The more critical of the issue is going to be more about what does the sim recurrent training program (both the interim and the return to service) look like more than the actual sectors in the jet. No doubt the line trainers will be bloody busy in those first couple of months.